1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to using a calendar system and other availability data shared among users to schedule conferences (including meetings) among users, and in particular to schedule a conference based on the definition of one or more groups of users.
2. Description of the Related Art
A number of software applications are available for scheduling conferences among busy members of an organization. For example, a commercial meeting scheduling application is available from Meeting Maker Inc. of Waltham, Mass.; and from Latitude of Santa Clara, Calif. These applications have in common a database that stores information related to a calendar of conferences and appointments each member is scheduled to attend. Such a database is herein called a shared electronic calendar. For purposes of the following discussion, the term conference includes any simultaneous coming together of multiple parties for communication, whether involving a meeting held in person or involving remote communications, including data, audio, video, or multi-media communications, or some combination of in-person meetings and remote communications.
For example, some systems allow a conference organizer user (the “organizer”) to specify a list of mandatory attendees and a list of optional attendees from the organization. The scheduling application (“scheduler”) then determines one or more proposed times that all the mandatory attendees can attend a meeting based on data in the organization's shared electronic calendar. The proposed times are presented one at a time in chronological order. The scheduler also lists the optional attendees who are also available to attend each proposed time. The organizer then sends a message to the selected attendees for one of the proposed times, inviting them to attend the meeting.
While greatly simplifying the task of finding times when a limited number of persons are available for a conference, the existing systems still suffer some deficiencies.
For example, under some circumstances, such as when the list of mandatory attendees is large, the first proposed time may be too distant to be useful for the purposes of the conference. For example, the purpose of the meeting may be to determine what research results to present at an upcoming scientific convention. When the first proposed time is too close to, or after, the start of the convention, the first proposed time is not useful for accomplishing the purpose of the meeting. The existing systems do not give an organizer sufficient automatic choices to resolve such a scheduling conflict.
One approach would be for an organizer to identify one or more representative groups of persons without requiring a particular member of the group to attend.
For example, suppose that a conference is desired to determine what research to present at a scientific convention on the topic of possible prion-based diseases above and beyond bovine spongiform encephalopathy (also known as “Mad Cow” disease). In this example, the determination requires the attendance of a scientists in six disciplines including discipline A (protein biochemistry), discipline B (poultry and wild game bird biology), discipline C (domesticated and wild game swine biology), discipline D (domesticated and wild bovine biology), discipline E (ichthyology), and discipline F (medical pathology). Furthermore, in this example, the organization includes two scientists in each discipline, but due to their busy schedules, as reflected in their electronic calendars, all twelve of these scientists cannot convene for a joint conference until after the scientific convention. Only one person of each pair of scientists in each discipline need attend the pre-convention conference. Thus a minimum of six scientists are need for a quorum, provide they represent the six disciplines. There are 26 (i.e., 64) combinations of minimum conference attendees which are acceptable in this example.
With extant scheduling systems, an organizer has to enter all 64 combinations manually and obtain one or more proposed dates for each combination. Then the organizer would have to review the 64 or more possible dates and select a best one, e.g., the earliest. This is a tedious, time consuming, and error-prone process. In most instances, the organizer would try a few of the 64 combinations and then either give up or settle for a date that is not optimal.
Even if the organizer perseveres through 64 manual combinations, there still may be no proposed date that is sufficiently before the scientific convention to allow the issue of interest to be addressed and acted upon. The current systems do not resolve conflicts, e.g., the current systems do not identify which group or groups are most responsible for causing the greatest delay and do not offer to management an approach to resolve the conflict.
Clearly, there is a need for a conference scheduling system that does not suffer the deficies of current conference scheduling systems.
The approaches described in this section could be pursued, but are not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated herein, the approaches described in this section are not to be considered prior art to the claims in this application merely due to the presence of these approaches in this background section.